


Stockholm Syndrome Is Not in Stock

by closetcellist



Series: Lil' Bit of Lovecraft [8]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 16:19:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1694648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/closetcellist/pseuds/closetcellist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damien, a previous Strex Corp employee, amuses Kevin and unwillingly gives him relationship advice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stockholm Syndrome Is Not in Stock

**Author's Note:**

> This fic spans the time between the fall of Strex Corp and the end of the previous fic, and is presented from the point of view of Damien, an original character and former Strex Corp employee, whom Kevin allowed to live specifically to play with. This fic includes mentions of, though not direct descriptions of, torture, specifically pulling teeth.
> 
> This fic also references an unnamed "she." This is Cthylla, an elder god that the set of doubles fought in the rp this fic is based around.

Damien woke up, and was surprised about that, but only for a moment. After the initial surprise of finding himself still alive, he was hit by the pain in his mouth. Gentle prodding revealed swollen gums around the gap at the back of his mouth where three of his molars used to be. The short, shuddering breaths that discovery sparked revealed that his ribs were also bruised, at the very least. He let out a small and pitiful whimper.

All of this occurred before he opened his eyes.

Actually opening them, slowly, just in case he wasn’t alone and they hadn’t heard him, didn’t do much for the scenery. The room (cell? He wondered, briefly. He knew there were…more secure rooms in some of the deeper parts of Strex Headquarters) was dark, windowless, except for the small, security glass portal on the door, letting in the dim glow of the emergency lights that were always on in the lab. At least he knew where he was—in the back room of the lab. There were worse places to be. This room was used like the on-call room for doctors, equipped with a cot and a small bathroom, as well as…well usually it was used as extra storage, but a brief exploration revealed that it had been mostly cleared out. Entirely cleared out. Purposefully cleared out.

Damien began to worry. As happy as he currently was to be alive, the state of this room seemed to indicate some kind of forethought, and perhaps planning on the parts of Kevin, who’d gone completely out of bounds, and possibly Javier as well. He wondered if the clone had encouraged the monster to keep him alive, though his behavior during their encounter (what little he could remember of it) indicated that was probably unlikely.

Damien sat heavily on the cot, trying to take in the situation logically and emotionlessly, even though there were certainly already emotions building. Mostly panic. But he was both a scientist and a captive and he had to be smart about this, he told himself, clasping his hands to keep them from shaking. It sort of worked.

Overpowering Kevin seemed unlikely and trying inadvisable. Javier was a possibility, though his recently proven propensity for violence indicated a low chance of success. Damien wished he wasn’t so weak. Strex had a gym. Why hadn’t he ever gone? Or taken self-defense classes in college? So a physical escape when they were present was pretty much out.

Convincing them to let him out also seemed pretty low in terms of probability. He’d have to break out while—

The main lights in the lab came on. Damien pushed himself further back on the cot, toward the wall, feeling the instinctual fear of all prey, wishing he could hide, burrow, become less, avoid detection. The wall continued to be solid and unsympathetic.

The door swung open, refusing to even offer the nearly comforting creak expected in a situation like this. Kevin stood in the doorway, just a shadow with the only light behind him, but Damien knew he was smiling. He was always smiling. Smiling was Strex policy, Damien thought hysterically, they’d trained him to smile, to make him friendlier, so they could deal with him more easily. Well it wasn’t fucking working, he wanted to shout at Douglas, who was dead in Night Vale, and at his past self, who’d agreed with them when they’d thought that one up. It’s so much fucking worse, knowing he’s smiling.

“Hi Damien!” Kevin said brightly, and Damien felt cold terror pour down his spine. He was more afraid even than before, when Kevin had stalked toward him dripping blood. Then he’d just thought he was going to die. Now he knew he wasn’t. “We’re going to have _so much fun_!” The monster said.

Damien started to cry.

***

They kept giving him softer food. That depressed him, for two reasons. He’d been here about…two weeks, he was pretty sure. He was no closer to figuring out how to escape, and they kept giving him softer food.

He figured he should be grateful, maybe. At least he wouldn’t starve to death. At least they understood, on some level, that they were irreparably changing his bodily processes with their harm. But softer food meant no knives, not even plastic ones, and soon no forks. It also meant Kevin intended to keep taking them. His teeth.

He couldn’t stop poking the holes with his tongue. He’d tried, but as soon as he stopped thinking about it, he’d do it again.

He was tense. He was always tense now. He never knew when they would come, which one of them it would be. The light didn’t help; they still did things in the lab. He didn’t watch, couldn’t really see, and was sure anyways that knowing what they were doing would somehow make this worse.

He was exhausted. Tired of being tense, too tired to think of how to escape. Maybe he’d bleed to death one of these times. But he sure as hell wouldn’t starve to death.

They kept giving him softer food. It was almost funny, how caring that was.

***

He laughed now. It was the only thing he had left to do, his final defense.

It didn’t deter Kevin, not at all. In fact, Damien was pretty sure he enjoyed it, hearing him laugh. Like he’d finally caught on to the game, was finally playing by the right rules. His hands shook all the time now, and soon it would just be soup, he was sure. He didn’t know how he’d eat the soup with his hands shaking, but he knew it was coming.

He didn’t know what was coming after his teeth were all gone, but he couldn’t think about that. He knew it would only be worse.

He missed his mom. He wanted to tell her she was right—he should have gone to pharmacy school. But he’d never see her again. He knew that now, knew that as certainly as he knew they’d give him soup, soon and he’d sit there, trying to eat it with his stupid shaking hands, because he couldn’t starve himself to death; it was giving up and it was also really hard to do. Your body is trained to survive even when your brain is falling out your ears from boredom and fear and the lab light was on again.

The door opened, and Damien was surprised when he saw more than the usual number of shadows. He blinked in the light, reflexively pulling back as Kevin knelt in front of him. He focused enough to see…doubles. Two of them? The same? And he remembered, before he was in this room there had been forms and reports about the other monster, and the original for the clone. But they weren’t supposed to meet, not ever, because… "Oh god no, if y'here again...she'sh...she'sh doing something..."If she came, god she was worse even than Kevin, and that made him laugh. Objectively he knew she was meant to be worse, but he couldn’t imagine—. "Y’two shouldn'...she wants you as a _set_...tha's how you work..."   
From deep inside, he felt the familiar existential terror welling. Physical pain was one thing (not a nice thing, it was killing him slowly, he knew it even if his body didn’t, but his hands wouldn’t stop shaking) but he could suddenly see himself trapped in this room, as _she_ came through, warping reality and he’d just be stuck here while the walls melted and the floor turned into quicksand and everything was eyes and teeth and blood…

He came back to himself later, vaguely remembering another round of awkward TLC from the clone, who’d been sporting bandages of his own. He wondered if the others, the Doubles were still there.

When the only thing that changed over the next few days was the flavor of his applesauce, he came to the conclusion that Kevin had beaten her and the Doubles had either died or left. Javier’s additional chilliness toward him led him to speculate that perhaps they’d learned the truth about themselves. He wondered, vaguely, not even a hope, if the Doubles, or if the Original, the scientist (god he was starting to sound like one of them) if _Carlos Perez_ who’d been normal once, who’d gone to school with Douglas, might come back for him. But he might be dead, so it wasn’t really worth it to do more than wonder. Probably was dead. Kevin’s Double (…C-something. Zhar in the reports, he thought he could remember) seemed a lot more docile. If Javier was injured, Carlos was probably dead. He could feel a little less sorry for himself if he believed that.

***

Overstimulation…no, over…saturation? Overindulgence. One of those. It was pretty clear—he’d read a paper, once. Psychology 101, back…how many years ago. Undergrad. It said…sometimes people, when they indulged too much the interest was cut down at the root—ruined the thrill…but did something like that apply to him? Could beings from another dimension become oversaturated with their inherent desires? But sometimes Kevin was so human, so like a horrible, spoiled, two-year-old—and psychoanalyzing him amateurishly was at least something to think about besides what was going to happen next.

Because he was running out of teeth and last time Kevin had seemed so _bored_ so _unimpressed_ and Damien had felt almost insulted that his pain wasn’t even amusing anymore because it made everything even more pointless than it already was… And god he was going to cry again if he had to think about what’s next what’s next what’s next what the fuck is he going to do next? What’s more interesting? Eyes, nails, skin, bones, screaming, _what does he want_.

Damien curled up as small as he could on the cot next to the wall, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. _Fuck_ , he whispered, in his head. He didn’t swear out loud anymore because he couldn’t pronounce ‘f’s without his front teeth. _God damn it. Fucking…fuck_. He’d crawled under the cot once, and had slept so much better, but Kevin didn’t like to have to get down on his knees to find him, hadn’t appreciated that _at all_ , so Damien didn’t do it anymore. With his eyes covered and his mind wandering, Damien missed the light coming on in the lab, and the soft sound of the door opening. He didn’t miss the weight of another person…thing, being added to the cot.

Startled, he looked up, eyes wide. But Kevin wasn’t even looking at him, instead, he stared listlessly at his hands, where they hung between his knees. _What does that mean?_ Damien thought frantically. This was completely new and he didn’t—

“Javier’s mad at me,” Kevin said, sounding sad and soft and vulnerable, and Damien just blinked at him.

“Huh?” Damien said, because this was not the usual routine.

“I told him his idea was dumb and then he disappeared,” Kevin looked close to tears. “I don’t know where he is and I don’t know why he’s so mad and I don’t know how to make him come back!”

Damien thought _do you want me to make you another one?_ But luckily didn’t voice it. That probably wasn’t what he wanted. “Whad am I supposed do do aboud id?” he slurred out, wincing at his own sloppy speech. Most fricatives were beyond him, at this point. He didn’t uncurl from his position against the corner.

“Help me make him not mad at me anymore!” Kevin said, turning and leaning into Damien’s space, making him flinch as he realized he couldn’t get further away. “You’re the only other human I know, besides Vanessa, but she’s with her family and she’s probably mad at me too. Everyone’s mad at me. How do I make them stop?”

It would have been a moving, if childish, plea, had Damien not spent the last however many weeks being slowly tortured by the creature trying to give him puppy-dog eyes with the black holes in his face. The familiar panic of being trapped too close to the monster welled up, but he tried to focus and give a real answer; maybe if he helped Kevin with a real problem, he wouldn’t hurt him anymore. “Uh, um, you should do someding to show you ad leasd lissen do him,” Damien offered weakly. “I dunno how do hind, um, where he wend bud he probably dinks you don’ respecd him. He might heel insulded, and maybe, um, I mean you are kind uh indimidading. You need do show him you dink he’s impordand.” That was pretty reasonable advice, he thought, if Kevin understood any of it.

Kevin blinked at him, partly because it took him a minute, re-listening in his head, to sort out all the words, and partly because that was the longest thing Damien had said to him ever. “You mean, besides telling him every day that he’s the most wonderful, interesting, amazing scientist ever?” Kevin said, pulling back a little. “Hmmm, I’ll have to think about that.”

_Please think somewhere else please just go away_ , Damien thought very loudly. He was pretty sure Kevin wasn’t psychic. But maybe the universe had finally decided to throw him a bone. “Thanks, Damien!” Kevin exclaimed, more brightly than anything else he’d said today. “I’ll do that. Golly, you’re so helpful sometimes I just want to choke you ‘til your tongue swells up and your eyes pop out!” He slipped out the door too soon to catch Damien’s distressed whine.

***

There was a new routine now, which Damien liked a lot better, even if it was more boring. It was less physically painful, and that was what mattered. Kevin had apparently decided Damien was his official advisor. Not in a way that would allow him to leave the back room of the lab, no, of course not. That would be humane, and Damien would definitely run away as fast as he physically could (which he suspected was not that fast, due to weeks of no exercise whatsoever). He did stop taking Damien’s teeth ( _for now_ the little voice that was Damien’s only friend whispered. It wasn’t a very good friend), and instead, tortured him with the stupidest problems that ever plagued anyone, eldritch abomination or not.

“…and _then_ Vanessa told me there was something growing in the old Management office. She thinks it’s becoming sentient, and she’s worried that Desert Bluffs is trying to copy Night Vale. You know they have some sort of monsters running their radio station over there?” Kevin said, sailing blithely past the massive irony deposit in that statement. “Why would Desert Bluffs do that? I can’t feel them yet, so they’re not really _alive_ right now, but there’s definitely something gross there. Javier took a sample of some to study and Vanessa _swears_ she heard it scream but I didn’t hear anything.” Kevin held up his hand to the light from the doorway, inspecting the nails he’d been filing. They were much sharper now. “So I told her ‘Vanessa,’ I said, ‘Vanessa, if you’re worried about non-sentient goop taking over your job, maybe you need to look at how you’re doing your job,’ and she positively glared at me! I’m sorry but—“

“Oder people hab beelings, you know,” Damien cut in, face a mask of strained and forced attention. This was a topic Damien spent a lot of time focusing on, because unless Kevin concentrated, he often did forget that other people had feelings.

“Do you think I was too harsh?” Kevin asked, looking worried now.

“Yes,” Damien said without hesitation. “You should probably apologish, nex dime you see her.”

Kevin sighed, “I guess you’re right.” He brightened up. “Thanks, Damien!” he exclaimed as he reached over and wrapped his arms around Damien’s head and neck. Mostly his neck. Kevin was trying to get used to hugging but it wasn’t going very well.

Damien let out a yelp and scrabbled against Kevin’s arms and chest, trying to push him away so he could breathe. It was the first time Kevin had touched him in weeks and he hadn’t been prepared. But Kevin was very strong, and determined to show his appreciation. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Damien heard, before he passed out.

 


End file.
